How to stop letting fear hold you back

Fear aka that thought trigger that seems to stops us in our tracks, that little voice in our head that always pops up when we do something out of our comfort zone, it's always there, it steals our joy and diminishes our growth. It's not until I started reading 'Feel the fear, and do it anyway' by Susan Jeffers, which in my opinion is a life changing book, where I began to understand fear and how it works. You can read my review of the book here, but, this book completely changed my mindset and my approach to everything I did and continue to do now.

Feel the fear and do it anyway

A favourite moment of mine was when I read this small section;

"The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow! Every time you take a step into the unknown, you experience fear. There is no point in saying, "When I am no longer afraid, then I will do it." You'll be waiting for a long time. The fear is part of the package."

Now take a moment and imagine what you want to achieve or what you want to say or what you want to do. Now imagine one year has passed, someone asks you why didn’t you do it, and you reply by saying; ‘because I was scared of what other people will think or what if I failed’. So I ask, in this little daydream, where did being scared get you? Nowhere. You’re in the same place you were, only a year later. Now, imagine you did do what you wanted to do, a year passed, you have experienced incredible opportunities, now, someone asks, how did you do that, you replied by saying: by being fearless. Which path would you choose? I know my answer.

Don't let your comfort zone hold you back

Let me not miss out a crucial part in my journey with fear and explain, that yes, it was hard, yes, it was scary, but never let my fear stop me or keep me stagnant. I always continued and continued until the fear of doing that thing no longer affected me; I learnt to bypass the feeling entirely, I felt the fear and did it anyway. I've taught myself to ask a simple question when I start to feel a sense of fear take over. "What is the worst that will happen?". Now obviously (disclaimer alert) this doesn't apply to when you are actually in a frightening situation, but it does start to put things into perspective and leave you questioning whether it was or is even as bad as you think it is or whether you should be even fearing anything in the first place. Once you've asked yourself that question, the reality of most things is nothing will happen that will cause you or others any harm and even better you will gain something from the experience.

Always remember

@@To go to a place of greatness we have to remove ourselves from our comfort zone, dance with fear and ride through the process.@@